Dutch transport workers went on strike for disability benefits. Trains stood still for 24 hours, and according to leaked documents the government has already withdrawn part of the cuts

Since two in the morning, not a single train ran in the Netherlands except the airport line between Amsterdam, Schiphol and Hoofddorp, which operated four times an hour. Some carriers didn't dispatch a single bus, tram or metro, and the ferries across Amsterdam's IJ bay stopped running. The FNV trade union had already announced the 24-hour nationwide strike at the end of July, not over drivers' wages but over the government's plan to cut 6.5 billion euros from social security. NOS ↗ NRC ↗

The strike came a week after budget documents leaked showing that the minority cabinet of Prime Minister Rob Jetten was withdrawing a large part of those cuts. The unions consider this insufficient and are demanding that the social security savings disappear entirely. NOS ↗

Why it was transport workers who went on strike

The choice of public transport was no accident. FNV justified it by saying that people in this sector, due to the physical demands of the job, have an above-average chance of ending up on the WIA disability benefit. "They must be able to rely on the fact that when things go wrong, help exists," said an FNV representative for regional transport. The union also added that it was striking for passengers too, and for everyone who might one day find themselves dependent on the social safety net — including their own partners, children and friends. NOS ↗ NOS ↗

The dispute has been running since spring. Three trade union confederations, FNV, CNV and VCP, gave the government an ultimatum on 11 May, with a deadline of the end of May, to withdraw the cuts to WW unemployment benefits, WIA disability benefits, and the accelerated raising of the AOW retirement age. FNV chairman Hans Spekman refused at the time to negotiate with the government at all, and CNV leader Hans van den Heuvel said the cabinet was taking a "blunt axe" to the social security system. Under the plan, the maximum duration of unemployment benefit is to fall from two years to one, in exchange for a higher amount, and disability benefit is to be reduced for certain groups of recipients. The unions are not arguing that the system doesn't need to change. They agree with the government that too many people remain outside the labour market and could return to it faster, but they say this won't be achieved by cutting benefits. "Our social security system must not be hollowed out," said CNV chairman Hans van den Heuvel. NRC ↗ NOS ↗

Transport workers were neither the first nor the last. Trains had already stood still on 24 June, for four hours that time. Last Friday, the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Zeeland stopped working for almost eight hours, with the strike deliberately starting at 11:15 to split the impact between the day and evening shifts. The baton passes to the metal industry on 10 and 11 September, to be followed by waste management, cleaning services and construction. NOS ↗ NOS ↗ NOS ↗

The port also produced the most vivid testimony to what the strikers fear. Misja Vos, who secures containers on ships and says he suffers from pain in his shoulder and elbow, told regional broadcaster Rijnmond that he wants to work until he's sixty-five, but is afraid of what will happen if he drops out. "They use us like a broiler chicken. Except a broiler chicken is put out of its misery after six weeks. They're trying to milk us for as long as possible," he said. NOS ↗

What the government withdrew a week before the strike

The minority coalition of D66, VVD and CDA reached agreement on the budget at the last minute on 31 August, after a weekend and part of a night of negotiations. Without opposition support it has no majority in parliament, so the goal of the agreement was, according to CDA leader Bontenbal, "a good handshake to the opposition." NOS ↗

Already the next day the content of the agreement leaked out. According to documents obtained by RTL Nieuws, the government is largely reversing the planned cuts to social security. The savings of 2.8 billion euros on pensions have been definitively scrapped, the reduction of the maximum daily wage base worth 824 million has been scrapped, and the shortening of unemployment benefits from two years to one is being postponed, worth another 684 million. 1.5 billion euros is to go toward repairing purchasing power, and the tax on high incomes will rise by 750 million. NOS ↗

Here lies the core of the dispute. The leaked list names pensions and unemployment benefits. WIA disability benefits are not named in it. NOS wrote regarding the port strike that the government still wants to save billions on social security and that the exact shape of it is still under discussion. It follows that the unions were not striking for nothing. They were striking precisely over the item for which no concession was confirmed. NOS ↗

Social Affairs Minister Vijlbrief expressed regret over the strike and said that the budget to be presented on Prinsjesdag will show that the government has listened to the unions' criticism. "Better to talk than to strike," he said. FNV replied to him that "social security is not the government's piggy bank" and that both employees and employers have paid contributions into it for years. NOS ↗

Prime Minister Jetten had already conceded in parliament back in early June that the government was willing to "possibly" reduce the billion-euro savings, but only once a substantive agreement with the social partners and the opposition on the future of WW and WIA was on the table. "The door is wide open," he said at the time, adding that the numbers were not decisive. The cabinet had already withdrawn the accelerated increase of the retirement age even before that, precisely in the hope of getting the unions to the table. It didn't happen. NOS ↗

The day the roads barely felt it

The motoring association ANWB warned that the morning rush hour would be busier. It wasn't. Road authority Rijkswaterstaat counted 206 kilometers of traffic jams at the peak, which it described as "a bit busier" than on a normal Wednesday. "It looks like a great many people adjusted their daily schedule and worked from home. They certainly didn't head out onto the roads en masse," an ANWB spokesperson told the ANP news agency. NOS ↗

It shifted elsewhere instead. Car-sharing platforms reported a sharp increase, with SnappCar speaking of thousands of extra trips and MyWheels of nearly four times the volume compared to a normal Wednesday. NOS ↗

People improvised in other ways too. The Amsterdam primary school De Zeeheld chartered a sightseeing boat, since seven of its teachers live in Amsterdam-Noord and normally commute to work by ferry. Besides them, the boat also picked up four pupils who had no one to bring them in, and the remaining seats went to teachers from nearby schools. In Sittard, meanwhile, line 332 kept running because its driver is not a union member and would not have received compensation for striking. "I probably won't be carrying many people, since most assume I'm not running. But I'm sitting here anyway, otherwise I won't get paid," he told regional broadcaster L1. NOS ↗ NOS ↗

Both sides read the fact that the day passed without a traffic collapse in their own way. The newspaper De Telegraaf headlined a statement by a member of parliament from the governing VVD calling public transport strikes "quite antisocial." De Telegraaf ↗ The Rotterdam port business association Deltalinqs, for its part, said that such discussions belong at the negotiating table in The Hague and that the strike damages the supply chains the economy runs on, at a time when the port is already grappling with geopolitical turbulence besides. NOS ↗

What makes the Dutch dispute different

Neither Slovak nor Czech media covered the strike. It deserves attention for two reasons, and neither of them is about trains.

The first is the nature of the strike. Public transport employees brought the country to a halt over an insurance scheme that has nothing to do with their paycheck, but with what comes when their body can no longer keep up with work. It is a solidarity strike for a benefit that most of the strikers will never draw themselves. The unions haven't put it that directly, they speak of striking for passengers and for their own families, but it amounts to the same thing.

The second is the mechanics of a minority government. Jetten's cabinet has no majority in either chamber and has to buy votes item by item. That is exactly why the pension savings could be withdrawn, when it was necessary to win over the opposition Pro, while the discount on the petrol excise duty will instead last a year longer thanks to the right-wing JA21 and SGP. In such a budget, social security stops being a policy program and becomes a currency. Pro leader Klaver said after the leak that he still sees billion-euro cuts in the text and that the compromise won't help ordinary people. NOS ↗

Limits of this account

Everything we know about the withdrawn cuts comes from the leak to RTL Nieuws, which was confirmed by insider sources. The official documents won't arrive until Prinsjesdag on 15 September, and until then it isn't known how much of the original sum actually remains for the government. The claim that disability benefits are not among the withdrawn items is therefore a claim about the leaked list, not about the finished budget. The maximum daily wage base, whose reduction the government scrapped, is shared across several benefits, so the line between "withdrawn" and "kept" may not be as sharp as the arithmetic suggests. The sources do not state this explicitly, though; this is our own conclusion.

The text rests mainly on the public broadcaster NOS and the newspaper NRC. Coverage of the strike day draws on the ANP news agency and regional broadcasters, which provides vivid detail but not a representative sample. From the newspaper De Telegraaf we had access only to the headline, not the text, because its publisher blocks automated access. The same applies to Trouw, AD and de Volkskrant, which is why we do not cite them in the article, even though they covered the strike.

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Illustration photo: the platform of Utrecht Centraal station with an NS double-decker train, in an archival photo from 2015. Photo: Sebastiaan ter Burg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0